meehawl

all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned

Oil Shocks

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But within three years, we’ll be extracting as much from foreign suppliers as they can spare. At that point, demand cannot continue to grow at the current pace. It cannot exceed supply … For some reason, America’s politicians and special-interest groups never mention the limits of oil companies’ capacity for making gasoline … Even if public opposition and economic impediments to refinery expansion should disappear today, the oil industry could not install new equipment fast enough to prevent a shortage two or three years from now.

The idea that Saudi oil reserves are drying up was certainly not something that the Saudi oil finance ministers and their U.S. counterparts would have admitted. In fact, they lined up to say that the industrial world has nothing to worry about on the oil front for decades. That so many high-ranking Saudi and US officials should gather in public to tell us not to worry should be quite worrisome.

Earlier here.

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